Judgments Around Grief | DFS 318

Jennifer, welcome to the destined for

success podcast. I'm your host, Jennifer Takagi, and this

podcast used to be called new manager, media manage. Ride from

the start. Many of the concepts are the same, but there's a

little shift. There's a shift, because I know we are all

destined for success, and I want to help you find the fastest,

smoothest way to reach your highest best as quickly as

possible. Join me in today's episode where you're going to

come up with new ways to build your skills and influence others

to make the impact you desire to make. I look forward to

connecting with you soon. Welcome to Destin for success.

I'm your host, Jennifer Takagi, and in the last episode, Dr Kim

harms shared her journey of grief, and she has experienced

an immense amount of grief. She had so many wonderful, beautiful

things to share that I I can't top that and would never even

try to what I will try to do is share a little bit of my journey

through grief. I've I've had quite a bit. If you've been

following the podcast a while, you've probably heard about a

lot of it. But my first point I want to make today is that grief

is a journey. It's a journey that we are all going to take in

some form or fashion. Chances are, if you're listening, you've

probably experienced grief. Sometimes we don't apply the

word grief to all the situations where it should apply, such as

the actual physical death. Of course, somebody actually passes

away. That is grief, for sure. But sometimes the grief is the

loss of a dream. It could be the loss of a job after and during

the pandemic, a lot of people went through an awful lot of

grief over losing their jobs, maybe their businesses, their

homes, some families fell apart. Lot of grief during that time,

and I'm sure the aftermath is still ongoing. It could be the

grief of really thinking you were the best qualified person

for a promotion and you weren't selected. You have to grieve

that. You have to grieve the loss of not being given what you

really felt that you earned. So grief shows up in a lot of

different ways and as many different things and experiences

that we can grieve our journey to recovering from that grief is

different for each of us, and like I started this out by

saying, it's a journey. It's not linear. I had always heard about

the steps of grief. You go through denial and then

acceptance and then anger, and I don't even know the steps, but

when the word steps was used, whether it was implied, intended

or I just made it up myself because I did. I thought you

just went from step to step. I thought that it would like end.

And I had an immense amount of grief in 1995 in the Oklahoma

City bombing. If you haven't heard that story, I worked in

the Murrah Federal Building, and I literally was told by God to

stay home and take care of myself that day, I was really

sick. I didn't need to go in, but you know, you think you have

to anyway. So I did not go in that day, and 35 of my friends

and colleagues were killed within my office and countless

others within the building that I knew. So that was a huge

amount of grief, and some people never recovered, like at all,

and I was very committed to wanting to recover and not

wanting to relive that day every day, and that's why, oftentimes,

I don't talk about it a lot. And it's not that I'm not willing to

like we can have a conversation about it. I could probably

repeat just about everything that happened that day, because

it's so vivid. Uh, but I don't, I don't want, or have any deep

desire, to relive it every day, just as I go about my business,

living my life. But after that experience, I started noticing

that, like, it doesn't go step by step. It's more like, do you

remember reading Family Circus? I know a lot of people don't get

the newspaper today. I don't even know if you can get it in

print anymore, but Family Circus was this super funny cartoon,

and on Sundays, when it came out, on in the Sunday funny part

of the paper, it was like, it showed a family, and one little

kid is running around all over the house and just like

footprints everywhere, and it's like all over the map, literally

all over the map, all over the board, all over the house. And

that's what grief is to me, because one day you're going on,

minding your own business, and bam, you are just knocked upside

the head with this deep feeling of loss and mourning and oh my

gosh, like, where did that come from? My parents. I adored. I

had great parents, and I'm very fortunate to be able to say

that. And my mom had had a massive stroke. She was way too

young. She was only 62, and seven years after her stroke, my

dad was diagnosed with kidney cancer, and he had been her

primary caregiver, and so for four more years, while my dad

battled kidney cancer and my mom's health continued to

decline. My sisters and I were stepping in anyway, in every way

that we could, to help take care of them, and they died 12 days

apart, just a month shy of their 57th wedding anniversary. They

got married at 16 and 18, and that was horrible, like we had

barely caught our breath from dad passing away and figuring

out how to take care of mom, because she needed 24 hour care,

and then she passed away. So it was just a lot, and she had oral

cancer. We did not know it, but the blessing was she was

completely paralyzed on her left side from the stroke, and didn't

feel it. She didn't really have any pain till, literally, five

days before she died, and as soon as we realized it, she was

given pain medicine and was really pretty comfortable until

she passed. But that was a lot. That was a lot. They owned their

home. We had to get rid of the property and all the things in

it. And there were a lot of emotions. A lot of it was a lot.

It was a lot. And it had been two years, right at two years,

since their passing. And my dad died November 16, and my mom the

28th they were 12 days apart, and it was Thanksgiving, and it

was two years later, and my husband happened to be out of

town, and I just had this overwhelming desire, need to

bake all my mom's favorites. My mom and I used to bake together

a lot. We cooked together a lot too, but baking was kind of our

thing, and the next thing I knew, like, I don't even know

how many things I had baked, I just found myself on the kitchen

floor in a ball, just sobbing, and I hurt physically. And that

was the first time that I had ever noticed, realized, or had

any concept, that you could physically hurt from grief. I

knew you could emotionally. I knew that heartache feeling, but

to have your body be in that much pain. So in addition to it

not being a linear, step by step process, and it went all over

the board, and then it was Slappy upside the head, but then

you could feel it so physically, was overwhelming. So my first

point is that it's a it's a journey. It's not linear, and

you may feel it physically if you haven't already, and if you

have, yes, that's kind of a normal thing. I just, I just

didn't know it was. It doesn't matter if the information is

presented to you until you need it, it doesn't make sense, and

you're just like, Yeah, whatever. And then you're like,

wow, I wish I had known that well. You, you might have heard

it before. So to step us up a little bit on this, on this

podcast, um,

you. You have to make a decision to experience joy again. You

have to make a decision to experience joy again. There is a

very wrong conception which makes it a misconception that if

you experience joy, then you may not be grieving correctly, or

you may not have grieved long enough. Well, I'm just here to

say, right now, right here, that's a bunch of crap. Ola, the

world is a beautiful place. There is so much to help feel

joy about there is so much to enjoy. We've heard most of our

lives. If you haven't, I'll be the first to tell you, there's a

saying, and it's stop and smell the roses that can be a joyful

experience. What brings you joy? What brings you happiness? What

brings you contentment? It's okay to feel joy. It's okay to

move on. A counselor after the bombing explained it that you

have an index card in front of your face, and whatever

traumatic event happened, it's written on that index card, and

it's held right in front of your face. And those few first few

days or weeks again, whether it's a physical death of a

person, loss or even a pet, because we get very attached to

our fur babies or a job or a dream. It's like when that first

happens, those first hours, days, weeks, it's like that

index card is right in front of your face, and that's what you

see, and it's hard to see anything else, and you shove it

over just a little bit, and you can see beyond, but, man, it is

just right back there. It is right there. And if you can pick

up that index card that holds everything about that track

tragic event, and you can put it back in your brain and just file

it away so it's not right in front of your face, and then

pull it out when you want to revisit it. So for me, the day

the Oklahoma City bombing, I bring it up in talks like this,

where it seems like it's suited and it fits. I've been given a

lot of feedback, direction, guidance, that every talk I do,

every stage I take, I need to talk about it. And I just

haven't found a way to make that like really work for me and be

the message I want to put out there. So I I don't, but I do

have some talks where I definitely share that message.

When I have talks about intuition and listening to your

intuition, or like that time I didn't listen to my intuition,

there are some really appropriate places where I share

the message, and again, I'm totally willing to but I think

there's a time and a place for it. And I pull out that card and

I revisit that day on April 19 each year, and I try to attend

the service every year if I can. In 2024 I did not go because I

had just had my knee replaced a month before, and there's a lot

of walking involved, and I wasn't sure that I really had

the stamina yet. Spoiler alert, I wouldn't have had the stamina

I thought I would. I wanted to, but no, not quite yet. 2025 is

the 30th anniversary. I really want to go, because that's when

I go and I honor my friends that I lost. I connect with their

family members that still go, and that gives me a lot of joy,

and I enjoy it a lot, and I enjoy reconnecting with those

people. I have a girls trip planned, and so I may not be

able to make it for the 30th and that will be the best if I

don't, it will be the best decision for me, right? So every

decision we make is the best decision we could make at that

moment. But joy can come faster. It doesn't have to feel like a

kid waiting for Christmas. You don't have to wait to feel

joyful again. I would highly recommend you make a list of

things that you liked doing and found joy in before this event

happened, and try to get back to some of that. There was a book,

and I tried to find the name of it for this episode. And. I was

unsuccessful in finding it, but it was a religious book, and it

centered around the theme of when grief becomes a sin. And

the gist of the book, as best I recall, was that grief becomes a

sin when you can no longer enjoy the company of others and bring

glory to God, because obviously it was a religious book. And so

who, who is, who's losing out on your love and what you bring to

the party, if you're still in this place of deep seated grief?

And I'm not saying grief is wrong, grief is right, grief is

part of life. But sometimes you have to ask yourself, Am I ready

to move into joy, and can I do it a little step? Can I go get

some flowers and enjoy those little walk around the park make

me feel better. A lot of time, physical movement can help. And

I think that's what unlocked so much about my grief around my

parents death. When I was baking all that I was moving around the

kitchen. I was mixing up the next thing, while the last thing

was in the oven, I was washing those dishes so I was ready to

go to the next thing and all that movement and all those

smells, because smells are create very powerful memories.

Just got it all churned up. And so once I got over my heartbreak

of the moment, and I started slicing into all those amazing

baked goods, and remembered all the good about my mom. I

experienced joy in the midst of my tears. And several years

later, as friends were losing parents and some lost spouses, I

started hearing little reverberations of stories about,

oh, I don't think I'm grieving crap quite right? I, you know, I

don't this doesn't feel normal, like, am I normal? And so I

wrote a short book, you know? It's a 10 minute read. I love

short books, and I was very honored that it became a best

seller on Amazon. And it's grief, navigating your own path,

finding your way through grief. And I put the link in the show

notes if you have any interest in it. I'm not really trying to

pedal or sell the book here, but just so you know, it's there. I

I did have a woman I didn't even know was in a group I was in,

and she was willing to read it, and she thought it had some

helpful, valuable things. So if you do happen to get it off

Amazon, I hope it finds you. You find some some peace in it, and

some very practical steps to start moving forward in your

grief. One of the things that seemed so bizarre to me as I was

going through my journey with grief was that other people were

living their lives, and I kept thinking to myself, how can they

be living their lives moving forward when this is what I'm

feeling? And it was a big learning moment when the

realization came that everybody's in a different place

on any given day, and my grief journey is a little different

than yours, but what I had to draw a line on is that my grief,

my journey, somehow had more importance than yours, or what

you were going through that day. And this woman gave a talk, and

she had, she had was battling cancer, and she said, I just

wanted to jump up and down and scream and tell everybody I have

cancer. How can you be doing what you're doing when I have

cancer, and she said, And it dawned on me that not everybody

is in that place at this time, at this moment, and they don't

have to be. So we are not alone on our journeys through grief

and finding our way back to Joy. But we need to find people who

can help take us along, help us along that path. So whether that

is a therapist, a counselor, a preacher, your best friend,

or you just make the decision, I'm going to experience joy

today. Even if it's just for a few minutes, I encourage and

urge you to do that today. I'm Jennifer Takagi with destin for

success, and I look forward to connecting with you soon. Thank

you for taking your time to spend with me on this latest

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forward to connecting with you soon. You.